Conclusion

This concluding chapter synthesises the key findings and theoretical points raised in this multidisciplinary collection and reinforces the richness and diversity of memorialisation at home and abroad during four centuries of British and Irish settlement overseas. Alert to the material composition of stones, their locations, symbolism, traditions of remembrance, and cross-cultural adaptation, contributors to this book show that gravestones were very public statements about the religious, geographic, economic, political and ethnic identities of European’s dying abroad. The collective findings suggest not just the evolution of a global death industry, but also the transfer of cultural practices by most societies wherever these migrants settled.